Book Launch & Short Film Night – Green Agents in Time

Green Agents in Time tells the story of the art project The Plantiarchy by G.C. Heemskerk and Bernice Nauta through a selection of 71 pencil and watercolour storyboards. In this proposed universe the plant is the protagonist: it playfully and critically tells a story of colonial expansion, botany, eroticism and speculative , flipping the historicised script of control and dependency.

On this evening, the short film The Plantiarchy (2025) will be accompanied by two other protagonists: we meet Koki, the parrot of Marshal Tito who is still alive to this day, in the short documentary Koki, Ciao (2025) by Quenton Miller, and a disabled bull who traveled all the way from a remote island in the Indian Ocean to Fryslân in the essay film Yntolerânsje (2025) by Jori(k) A. Galama.

Green Agents in Time
Book Launch & Short Film Night
Thursday 4 December, 20:30–22:00
at Filmtheater de Uitkijk

‣ Get your ticket here!

Film Programme
The Plantiarchy (2025) by G.C. Heemskerk and Bernice Nauta
In The Plantriarchy, a seductive plant lures two colonial botanists, gets taken to the West, and seeks revenge through invasion. Using volatile compounds and phytoacoustics, the plant communicates their malicious intent, revealing their plan to overthrow humanity after being plucked by the unsuspecting botanists.

Yntolerânsje (2025) by Jori(k) A. Galama
A speculative archive essay film that traces the entangled histories of cows, the Dutch colonial empire, and Frisian identity. The film departs from the story of the Île Amsterdam, a remote island in the Indian Ocean where five cows, left behind by 19th-century European settlers, multiplied into a herd of two thousand. Deemed a threat to the native ecosystem, the entire herd was exterminated by the French government in 2010. Only one disabled bull survived, now living in a cow retirement home in Fryslân, where a cow-whisperer was invited to converse with him. This encounter becomes the anchor for a speculative narrative that weaves together archival fragments and current crises.

Koki, Ciao (2025) by Quenton Miller
This is the autobiography of Koki, an immortal parrot. Artist Quenton Miller portrays the life of this unique animal, a loyal comrade of Marshal Tito, leader of Yugoslavia for 35 years. A rich photographic archive relives the caged memories of this cockatoo, who had the honour of meeting Hollywood stars, and bloodthirsty dictators. Koki, Ciao offers a humorous portrait, non-aligned with the documentary orthodoxy, that deals with the false constructions of history.